desperately seeking sensation

    I just reread today's poetry post, and it led me to thinking about my psychology. What combination of preexisting conditions and experiences has led me to where I am? What's exerted the most pressure on me, and why? Well, I realize there's no answering those questions in any definitive way. Doesn't mean I'm not curious. On my laptop, I have a link to the BBC Science & Nature Psychology page, which includes numerous quizzes. It was time to boot something up.
    This time around, I decided to see how I score on the Sensation Seeking Scale. 40 questions; allot 15 minutes. 

RESULTS

Thrill and adventure seeking - you score 3 out of 10This consists of items expressing desires to engage in sports or activities involving some physical danger or risk such as mountain climbing, parachute jumping, scuba diving, speeding in a car, etc.

Experience seeking - you score 9 out of 10This describes the desire to seek new experiences through the mind and senses by living in a nonconforming life style with unconventional friends, and through travel.

Disinhibition - you score 9 out of 10This describes the need to disinhibit behaviour in the social sphere by drinking, partying and seeking variety in sexual partners.

Boredom susceptibility - you score 5 out of 10This indicates an aversion for repetitive experience of any kind, routine work, or even dull or predictable people. Other items indicate a restless reaction when things are unchanging.

Your total sensation seeking score is 26 out of 40
More on sensation seeking    Sensation seeking is a personality trait expressed in behaviour as a tendency to seek varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences and to take physical risks for the sake of having such experiences.
    These experiences could take the form of extreme adventure activities such as skydiving, snowboarding and mountain climbing. But the trait can also express itself in high drug, alcohol or tobacco use.
    Men generally score higher than women on the total score and on all the subscales except Experience Seeking. Sensation Seeking Scale scores increase during childhood, peak in the late teens or early twenties, and thereafter decrease steadily with age.
    People with similar scores on the Sensation Seeking Scale also tend to be more romantically compatible with each other.
    Divorced males score higher than single and married males, and divorced and single females score higher than married females.

    I was not surprised by my result, though if I'd guessed, the number I'd have picked would have been higher. (Anything involving heights skews the score low because I'm afraid of heights, not of adventure or sensation. Similarly, if an "are you warm & fuzzy" quiz is all about puppies, I'm gonna come out sounding like an automaton - the opposite of a kitty quiz.)
    I wonder if this score is higher than it would have been if it hadn't been so inappropriately low in my 20s? Hmm....